Why ‘Authenticity’ on the Job Can Become a Trap for Employees of Color
Within the opening pages of the publication Authentic, author Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: everyday directives to “be yourself” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are far from well-meaning invitations for self-expression – they often become snares. This initial publication – a blend of recollections, studies, cultural commentary and interviews – seeks to unmask how organizations co-opt identity, shifting the responsibility of institutional change on to staff members who are already vulnerable.
Professional Experience and Wider Environment
The motivation for the book lies partially in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across retail corporations, startups and in worldwide progress, viewed through her experience as a Black disabled woman. The dual posture that Burey experiences – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of her work.
It emerges at a moment of general weariness with corporate clichés across the United States and internationally, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and numerous companies are cutting back the very structures that earlier assured change and reform. Burey delves into that arena to assert that withdrawing from corporate authenticity talk – namely, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a collection of aesthetics, peculiarities and hobbies, leaving workers preoccupied with handling how they are perceived rather than how they are regarded – is not a solution; we must instead redefine it on our personal terms.
Marginalized Workers and the Act of Identity
By means of colorful examples and discussions, Burey illustrates how employees from minority groups – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, employees with disabilities – quickly realize to modulate which identity will “fit in”. A weakness becomes a drawback and people compensate excessively by working to appear acceptable. The effort of “presenting your true self” becomes a reflective surface on which all manner of expectations are placed: emotional labor, revealing details and constant performance of gratitude. In Burey’s words, workers are told to share our identities – but absent the defenses or the trust to survive what arises.
As Burey explains, workers are told to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the confidence to withstand what emerges.’
Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience
The author shows this situation through the account of Jason, a deaf employee who took it upon himself to teach his team members about deaf culture and communication practices. His willingness to share his experience – a gesture of openness the organization often praises as “authenticity” – briefly made daily interactions smoother. Yet, the author reveals, that improvement was fragile. After employee changes wiped out the informal knowledge Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion dissolved with it. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he notes wearily. What remained was the weariness of being forced to restart, of having to take charge for an company’s developmental journey. According to Burey, this is what it means to be requested to expose oneself absent defenses: to face exposure in a structure that celebrates your transparency but fails to institutionalize it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a snare when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.
Writing Style and Idea of Resistance
Her literary style is both clear and lyrical. She marries academic thoroughness with a manner of connection: a call for followers to engage, to question, to disagree. According to the author, dissent at work is not overt defiance but moral resistance – the practice of resisting conformity in settings that demand gratitude for mere inclusion. To resist, in her framing, is to question the accounts companies tell about fairness and inclusion, and to decline engagement in rituals that perpetuate inequity. It might look like calling out discrimination in a meeting, opting out of uncompensated “equity” effort, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is made available to the institution. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of personal dignity in environments that typically praise conformity. It is a habit of honesty rather than rebellion, a method of insisting that one’s humanity is not based on institutional approval.
Restoring Sincerity
She also refuses rigid dichotomies. The book does not merely discard “sincerity” entirely: rather, she urges its reclamation. For Burey, sincerity is far from the raw display of individuality that business environment often celebrates, but a more deliberate correspondence between one’s values and one’s actions – a honesty that rejects manipulation by corporate expectations. Instead of treating genuineness as a mandate to disclose excessively or adapt to cleansed standards of transparency, Burey advises followers to maintain the elements of it rooted in honesty, self-awareness and principled vision. According to Burey, the aim is not to discard sincerity but to shift it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and toward relationships and organizations where confidence, equity and responsibility make {
